Terrorism and the Aid Industry: A Back to Basics Plan

Since the early nineties when the ‘End of History’ was upon us and the West indulged in geopolitically inconsequential peacekeeping missions and strategically neutral aid interventions there was only one goal for foreign aid, a statistical reduction in poverty. Following September 11th the world changed taking the aid industry into new territory. In Iraq and Afghanistan, on the front lines of the fight against Islamic militancy, and in countries such as Egypt, Sudan, Yemen, Iran and Palestine, aid was increasingly co-opted into the national security strategy. But a large and critical difference of opinion emerged between key actors in the American aid and anti-terrorism movements regarding whether or not poverty is the root cause of terrorism. Whether this divide resulted from political expediency, pop culture naivety, intellectual disconnect, or a combination of all three, America’s foreign aid policies remain stuck in limbo, continuing to be implemented using the same techniques of pre-9/11 poverty alleviation and then upsized in an effort to tackle terrorism.

With the transition to the Obama administration, the head of USAID yet to be nominated and talk of an aid czar it is the right time for a new more nuanced approach to be discussed, one that recognizes the importance of how aid is being delivered and not just how much, an approach that recognizes the opportunity to tackle poverty and violent extremism concurrently rather than prioritizing national security and combating extremism through the cooption and at the expense of the poverty alleviation agenda. Implemented accordingly, foreign aid can both reduce poverty and be an effective tool against violent extremism. What follows are four key recommendations to transform US foreign assistance into a more effective tool in the fight against poverty and violent extremism.

Poverty Alleviation, the Red Herring in the Fight Against Terror

Social and political advocates including Nobel Laureates and the President of the United States, pop singers and former Generals, all croon the same tune: “We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror,”[1] President George W. Bush, 2002. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Younis stated simply and definitively “We must address the root causes of terrorism…putting resources into improving the lives of the poor people is a better strategy”[2], echoing 2000 Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae Jung when he said, “At the bottom of terrorism is poverty”[3]. Pop culture is not without its vanguard of celebrities linking poverty to terrorism headed by none other than Paul David Hewson, otherwise known as Bono[4]. But research from a number of institutions has shown that factors other than poverty are better indicators of the rate and severity of terrorist acts.

Alan Krueger and Jitka Maleckova found in their 2002 study that better economic conditions and higher levels of educational attainment have a positive correlation to the support of terrorism[5]. Empirical research by Alberto Abadie of Harvard University found that countries with intermediate levels of political freedom and high linguistic fractualization were better indicators of the rate and severity of terrorist acts rather than poverty[6]. While in a November 2006 Foreign Policy survey including 9,000 interviews in 8 Muslim countries showed that twenty five percent of self proclaimed ‘radicals’ enjoy “above average or very high income levels” compared to twenty one percent of ‘moderates’[7]. Anecdotal evidence similarly supports the argument that poverty is not a root cause of terrorism. Nasra Hassan, after interviewing two hundred and fifty Palestinian militants and associates of militants, reported in the November 2001 New Yorker, “None of them were uneducated, desperately poor, simple minded, or depressed. Many were middle class and, unless they were fugitives, held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires.”[8]

Progress in Theory

Since ties between the prevalence of poverty and terrorism have been shown lacking, logically aid focused on poverty reduction can not contribute to efforts at reducing terrorism or violent extremism. That is, as long as aid is solely designed to alleviate poverty.

In 2002 USAID began its own introspective review of strategy in an effort to bring America’s foreign aid into line with the country’s national security objectives. The four year review brought together elements of several preceding discussion papers and reports ultimately leading to a re-focusing of America’s foreign assistance. “Policy Framework For Bilateral Aid: Implementing Transformational Diplomacy through Development”, the final product of the overhaul importantly recognized in 2006 that “many of the guiding principles that make sense for the more traditional part of the development and foreign aid agenda are less applicable when addressing some of the other important concerns that have emerged over the past 15 years” mentioning terrorism amongst others[9]. The document then dives into five core goals which form the center of the policy re-think for foreign assistance in the twenty first century. Although effective in helping to reshape how programs are conceptualized, only one sentence throughout the twenty three page document is dedicated to reshaping the crucial aspect of how aid is delivered. Without conviction, it states, “It [aid effectiveness] also requires new models of aid delivery”[10].

The sixty-eight page Strategic Plan 2007-2012 for the Department of State and USAID outlines USAID’s contribution to countering terrorism as providing “longer-term developmental solutions to terrorism”[11]. What these may be is unclear.

The overhaul of USAID brought about a more streamlined conceptual planning framework, AID was brought into the national security strategy and counter terrorism became part of an explicit goal. The new approach debuted spectacularly through the Iraq Community Stabilization Program, the largest USAID tender in history, described by a USAID document as “rather than focusing on traditional long term sustainable development objective, CSP is a short term COIN [counter-insurgency] program”[12].

The proverbial devil, though, was once again to be found in the detail. While the conceptual thinking was overhauled, new terms introduced, goals streamlined and strategies unified, in practice the thousands of aid workers scattered throughout the world, including in key frontline postings, continue to do the same things the same way as when aid simply meant poverty reduction. The only discernable change following the years of policy review has been the uninhibited growth of the aid industry. Yet on the front lines of the battles against poverty and violent extremism where the how not the how much matters, a place where few if any of the conceptual and theoretical policy changes have been felt, the effort is struggling. In the fight against militant extremism the current efforts often work contrary to the aim of winning the hearts and minds of the people, while on the front in the war against poverty quality has been replaced with quantity. For the full weight of American foreign aid to be effectively brought to bear against militant extremism the new conceptual framework in Washington should only be the first step towards a fundamental review of how aid is delivered.

Today, as before, the delivery of aid continues to remain focused solely on poverty reduction. When projects are designed the crucial question that is posed and must be clearly enunciated is, ‘What will the impact of this project be?’ In aid parlance the Logical Framework, beginning with inputs, moving to activities through to outputs and finally reaching the key, impact, must seamlessly flow from one to the other. For example, the construction of a school, alongside the provision of education materials and teacher training will result in ‘x’ number of children receiving an education with an impact of reducing illiteracy in the community by percentage ‘y’. The problem, though when upsizing aid, is that there is a natural tendency towards high expenditure and rapid turnover construction projects at the expense of crucial soft components. Iraq and Afghanistan are examples of how upsizing the aid industry has increased output but negatively affected the quality (impact) of programs.

The early years in Iraq exemplified the quality over quantity approach. Six years on the inadequacy of the exercise in upsizing is clear.

“The coalition, as of today, has completed over 13,000 reconstruction projects…we have rehabilitated over 1,500 schools… Six months ago, three-quarters of Iraq’s 27,000 kilometers of irrigation canals were weed-choked and barely functional. Today, a coalition program has cleared over 14,000 kilometers of these canals.”[13]

Bremmer’s logic is simple and clear, schools constructed equal improvements in literacy, irrigation channels cleared equal improvements in agriculture. But, as happened in Iraq, if a large number of those 1,500 schools rehabilitated were actually only repainted, the company responsible hidden behind 3m high concrete barriers and a plethora of security checks, inaccessible to the angry or frustrated communities, teaching materials unavailable and teachers ill trained; then from a broader national security and poverty reduction perspective, such an intervention can be considered ineffective or counterproductive.

Jawaharlal Nehru, founding father and first Prime Minister of India, referring to governance once said that “it is more important to adopt the right way, to pursue the right means, than even to have the right objectives, important as that is.”[14]

‘Supporting Strategic States’, one of the five core strategic goals under the USAID policy framework, for example, may be the right objective but how the programs are implemented, whether we pursue the right means and adopt the right posture, is more important.

Lessons Learnt From the Military

For all the animosity and misunderstanding between the military and the aid industry the two institutions face many similar challenges. In some missions the two institutions work side by side sharing resources and coordinating responses such as with the Tsunami tragedy, in others the relationship is more strained as in Iraq and Afghanistan with overlapping roles and distinctly, sometimes conflicting, approaches. Nevertheless, the challenges remain the same and lessons learnt by one can often be applied to the other.

Since the failure of the US military to deliver the rapid success in Iraq promised by uniformed and civilian leaders alike countless books, internal reviews and studies have been undertaken to pin point the reasons. By taking just a few of these documented and widely agreed upon lessons and reapplying them to the aid industry, not only in Iraq but elsewhere, it becomes clear how the method of delivery itself must change to meet the new challenges of the twenty first century[15].

Large Forward Operating Bases with thousands of troops living in walled insular compounds, drinking beer and eating burgers, successfully shifted under General Petraeus’ leadership to small outposts based in the community where the soldiers drank chai and ate kebab getting to know the community and the community getting to know them

Large aid contractors buried within military bases, surrounded by concrete barriers, catered to by Western crews, driving armoured vehicles, isolated and inaccessible to the people should have been smaller, more numerous organizations living amongst the people getting to know the community and the community getting to know them.

Soldiers with little knowledge of the country and its people should have received introductory language classes and training on the politics, tribal structure and history of the Iraqi people

Aid officials deployed on three month rotations, without any language training, knowledge of the history or culture of the country; or recent graduates in their mid-twenties employed due to political persuasion rather than technical expertise should have been regional and sector specialists drawn from a pool of experienced professionals specifically trained for foreign deployments and committed for longer term postings.

People are the prize, not the insurgents. Pursuing night time raids upon suspected insurgents with little intelligence to support the move created more support for the insurgency while rarely leading to any success against the insurgents

People are the prize, not the infrastructure. Cookie cutter contracts signed behind multiple layers of security, implemented by coalition friendly contractors not of the same community, tribe or even ethnicity should have been smaller grass roots projects involving community mobilization, consultation and context specific programming.

In summary it was how the US military conducted itself which was at fault and eventually by late 2007 proved to be its source of success and similarly it is how the aid industry delivers support that must change.

Recommendations for an Effective Aid Sector

Following lessons learnt from Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Sudan and other front line states, key recommendations for a successful shift in aid delivery include:

Recommendation: Preparation Preparation Preparation. USAID should provide structural development and support grants to help establish the foreign aid implementing partners it wants rather than the ones it has.

As Donald Rumsfeld once said, “you go to war with the Army you have. They’re not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”With preparation and foresight the aid community we have can be the one we need to act effectively on the frontlines of the hearts and minds campaign. The NGO’s Emergency Response Teams, the aid community’s version of the Navy SEALS, stand ready to deploy to anywhere in the world within 72 hours. They are trained, experienced and willing to go into any environment to provide life saving humanitarian assistance. They vary in size from up to three dozen of World Vision to a handful within smaller agencies. In total, throughout all of America’s professional NGOs, there are less than eighty full time standby team members. As the civilian first response team this is simply not enough. It is no surprise that in Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake while the international aid community made its preparations Islamic jihadi groups responded with generosity and speed[16]. Or in Beirut after the 2006 conflict with Israel while the aid community was still mobilizing Hezbollah began clean up activities and was distributing blankets, food and cash within the first week. In both cases the West was criticized for a slow response to the humanitarian crisis. As a result, not only did thousands suffer for lack of adequate and timely support, but it became a costly public relations disaster in the Arab world.

Additional ear marked funding for emergency response teams and pre-deployment training will ensure not only a more robust humanitarian response but a more effective buffer against extremists of all persuasion. Pre-deployment training will help ensure that what is often the first face-to-face engagement between an isolated community and a westerner is established and maintained in a positive manner.

Recommendation: Separation of Church and State: Awarding of grants and contracts should take into account broader political and religious currents.

Samuel Huntington’s ‘Clash of Civilizations’, in its complex theoretical entirety or its simplistic three word title, is eschewed by politicians when attempting to describe the new post Cold War paradigm that we are entering. Containment and confrontation are out, engagement and collaboration is in. Yet under the previous administration USAID become a vehicle for faith based proselytizing forays into traditional Muslim communities, confronting, rather than collaborating with these communities.

It was widely reported that only two Muslim organizations between 2001 and 2005 received federal grants or contracts for overseas assistance, while foreign assistance channelled through Christian faith based agencies under Bush’s administration nearly doubled over the same period[17]. While it’s too early into the new Administration’s term to pass judgement, in FY 09 only one Muslim organization received a federal grant from USAID. It is in the US national interest to pursue greater involvement of Muslim organizations in the foreign aid sector. In 2002 the Centre for Faith Based Initiatives was established in USAID, tasked “to create a level playing field for faith and community based organizations to compete for USAID programs”[18] The Centre should add to its level playing field charter the task of encouraging domestic Islamic social welfare and community support organizations with proven track records of moderation to expand their involvement abroad. This would follow the path of many secular and Christian international NGOs whose roots reach back to domestic poverty reduction programs in post World War II America.

While Christian faith based organizations should continue to be transparently evaluated when applying for grants and contracts, technical review boards should include a further assessment criteria or flag for further review projects that could undermine the broader national security strategy. At a macro level consideration should be given to the political undercurrents in the country or region, in particular how the awarding of a contract to a faith based organization may be beneficial to overall national security objectives.

Recommendation: One size does not fit all. A hand full of large hundreds of millions of dollar grants or contracts should be replaced by tens if not hundreds of smaller and more numerous grants.

One of USAID’s flagship instruments in Iraq was the Community Stabilization Program, a cooperative agreement awarded to IRD, a Virginia based not-for-profit contractor. The full value of the original tender at $1.38 billion dollars was sixteen times IRD’s turnover in the previous year[19]. Unsurprisingly, the one size fits all experiment failed with the program grossly behind target, mired in controversy and under investigation for wide spread fraud[20]. Around the same time as the CSP award was made the only other community based development initiative under the auspices of USAID, the Community Action Program, was consolidated from four separate agreements to one consolidated prime and three sub-grantees. While administratively expedient consolidating grants into larger one size fits all packages fails the effectiveness test. Diversity of partners is a strength! Even if it may feel to the bureaucrats like herding cats. USAID’s 2008 Development Grants Program initiative aimed at re-engaging directly with both American and indigenous NGOs is a step in the right direction along with the expansion of staffing levels at USAID. But engagement and additional funding alone will not turn the tide unless the bureaucracy, including the military, recognizes that civil society development takes root most vigorously when the US government is at arm’s length or out of sight.

In the development context grants are the contractual mechanism that allows the US government to demand results while keeping its distance. Grants recognize the impossibility of providing a prescriptive solution to a country’s development challenges. Hence grants (or cooperative agreements) have only a handful of budget lines are results based and allow the partner considerable on the ground flexibility to shift resources and shape the activities to best suit the needs. This has allowed for the hallmark of US government foreign assistance–organizations interacting with their counterparts stimulating development throughout the furthest reaches of the world. Recently though there has been a strong tendency for grants to be managed as contracts with prescriptive solutions, regular directives, unnecessary approval requirements and financial restrictions more akin to contracts. The result has been programs developed by bureaucrats in isolation implemented through solutions dictated from a distance word for word, line by line irrespective of the constantly changing situation on the ground. NGOs, to their detriment, have largely shied away from challenging this development preferring to remain in the good graces of the donor (and the funding stream that comes with it). To avoid unwieldy bureaucratic burdens as a result of necessary programmatic changes many NGO grantees are instead closing the feedback loop from the beneficiaries that in the past allowed for nimble and effective programming.

All politics is local and so too is the case in development. Whether reforming a ministry or training village teachers, allowing those who partner with the people in search of solutions the flexibility and freedom to shape their programs within a results based contractual framework will deliver more sustainable and entrenched success.

Recommendation: Partner with the Community. Local organizations should be an integral part of all aid operations.

Although it may seem obvious, the people are the prize, and the best way to reach people is through other people, not through large scale construction projects. Due to complex federal regulations or nationality restrictions local organizations are rarely adequately supported or emphasized. While building infrastructure may leave a mark, it is personal interaction that leaves a lasting impression. By emphasizing outputs based contracts we encourage efficiency over empathy, we prioritize structures and neglect relationships. In Iraq the endeavour for efficiency led to many sub-contracts being awarded to Kurdish construction companies to work in Sunni and Shia areas. Not only did this approach undermine employment generation efforts, a key tool in the Coalition’s strategy to weaken the insurgency, but it fuelled the flames of ethnic hatred and feelings of occupation. In other cases contractors not from the area performed poorly or outright stole funds leaving angry residents with no recourse as the main contractor was a faceless company buried behind multiple layers of security inaccessible to most Iraqis.

In one shining example of the disconnect between the community and outputs based contractors a monitoring team from a Swedish NGO visited a rural town in Ninewa governorate near Mosul in early 2005 where they had just completed a water supply project. In the foreground they saw a new water tank alongside a crane lowering their water tank, which they had only recently supplied, from the support structure that they had only recently built. Confronting the man leading the face lift they were told that it was only a temporary switch of tanks, theirs with his, so that he could take photos of the site and claim payment for a project that he had been contracted to complete.

Change in most Middle Eastern countries will only come from within, whether it is gender equality, child rights or religious tolerance. Their traditional society will circle the wagons as long as there is the perception of an outside threat. By providing the tools and resources to local groups we are allowing them to take up the battle in a way that only they know how.

Conclusion

Not only is the battle against Islamic militancy not about bricks and mortar but importantly, it’s not about America. The nationalities of those kidnapped and killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries highlights that all Westerners and even some who aren’t Western are targeted. That fellow Arab Muslims (Shia) are being killed and kidnapped is an insight into the historical and political perspectives of a large swathe of militants. Shia are apostates, Christians are Crusaders, Hindus and Buddhists are not people of the Book. Once this understanding is accepted then it follows that aid efforts should not be focused on showing how benevolent America is (by throwing billions of dollars into construction programs and plastering ‘From the American people’ signs on every space available) but rather how similar moderate Western and Eastern values are. In traditional societies this can only be done through face to face contact, day to day interaction, and the establishment of trust and relationships. Aid delivery models must be structured so as to enhance these aspects, not detract from them, as seems to be the result of the current modus operandi.

It is imperative for both advocates of foreign assistance and those tasked with combating the growth of Islamic extremism that a comprehensive review be conducted into how aid is being delivered. While foreign assistance projects should remain focused on poverty alleviation, any cooption for national security purposes should be done in such a way as to bolster the development impact. While overtly incorporating anti-terrorism objectives into foreign aid is anathema to aid workers, adopting the recommendations listed above would be a welcome change for most aid workers, representing a positive move back to basics.

Denis Dragovic (denis_dragovic@yahoo.com) has spent three years in senior leadership positions working for US based NGOs inside Iraq. He has over ten years of experience in Asia, Middle East and Africa both in emergency response capacities and transitioning programs into post-conflict environments.

Bibilography

Abadie A, “Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism, Working Paper 10859”, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2004, retrieved Sept 2009, http://www.nber.org/papers/w10859

United States Agency for International Development, Policy Framework For Bilateral Aid: Implementing Transformational Diplomacy through Development (PD-ACG-244), January 2006, retrieved Sept 2009, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACG244.pdf

United States Agency for International Development, Request for Information and Expressions of Interest Evaluation of the USAID/Iraq Community Stabilization Program; Effectiveness of the CSP Model as a Non-Lethal Tool for Counterinsurgency,28th January 2008

United States Agency for International Development Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination, US Foreign Aid: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st Century, January 2004, retrieved Sept 2009, www.usaid.gov/policy/pdabz3221.pdf

[9] United States Agency for International Development, Policy Framework For Bilateral Aid: Implementing Transformational Diplomacy through Development (PD-ACG-244), January 2006, retrieved Sept 2009, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PDACG244.pdf

[12] US Agency for International Development, Request for Information and Expressions of Interest Evaluation of the USAID/Iraq Community Stabilization Program; Effectiveness of the CSP Model as a Non-Lethal Tool for Counterinsurgency,28th January 2008